River Of Night – Snippet 35

It was nightfall,
and the combined parties, including Tom’s group and Robbin’s extended clan, had
closed the doors to the big barn, which was the only place large enough to
accommodate everyone not on security watch. Preventing a light leak was
important at night and Tom was pleased to note the discipline exercised by his
former mates. Tempers as well as the temperature had subsided considerably by
the time that Tom finished outlining his plan.

The assembled clans
and the bank survivors had watched the principals bat the ideas back and forth
for an hour. The audience’s collective head swung back and forth as though they
were watching center court at Wimbledon.

“So let me see
if I got this right,” Robbins said, still skeptical. “After we sort
out teams, step one is to evacuate this ranch while you link up with your
banker buddies at their ritzy refuge. That site is at least three, maybe five
days away and you haven’t had any contact with them in almost four months.
Meanwhile, we drag our collective asses through the zombie infected Cumberland
Valley for up to another week and find a spot to cross the Tennessee and secure
a hydroelectric power plant. Which may or may not be working. And we do this
while potentially being chased by a larger force of unknown origin and unknown
capabilities. And all because you think that they know where this place…”
he smacked the table top with a palm “…is located. Because you lost a
map.”

“Enough with
the crook!” Tom said angrily. “You’ve only mentioned the map what,
eight times? No matter how sorry I am, I can’t rewind the crash, Robbie! And if
I could, I’d fooking well save Gravy first, wouldn’t I!”

“Alright,
alright, everyone take a breath,” Debbie ordered. She looked back at her
husband and when he remained quiet, she gave Tom a little ‘come on’ gesture.

He inhaled once,
in-out, keeping his hands palm down on the table before continuing.

“I’ve been
thinking about it a lot,” Tom explained again. “Our bank plan was to
hunker down and wait for someone else to fix stuff. The bank fall back points aren’t are really
redoubts – they are interim way stations for some key people and data. You can’t
restart a civilization without a bank.”

“Umm, I’m
pretty sure that you can.” Robbins said.

“Actually, no,
you can’t,” Tom said insistently. “At least not any civilization that
you want to live in. Call it a bank, call it an agricultural cooperative, call
it an infrastructure restoration agency – someone has to manage the money.
Literally. What do we use for currency? How do you arrange a loan? Who
establishes and enforces exchange rates? Do you have any idea how big the
infrastructure projects to get this country running again are going to be?
Trust me, you are going to need an economic system which doesn’t rely on
trading wheat for iron for sugar and so on. It took hundreds of years to get
from feudalism and chattel slavery to something like a modern economic system.
Do you want to wait that long? Do you want your kids growing up in that?”

“Tommy, we’re
just parts of five families, with kids,” Robbins replied, before pulling a
familiar disc-shaped green can out of his pocket. He delivered several brisk
taps to the lid, tamping down the dip tobacco. “We aren’t Delta, we aren’t
FEMA and we aren’t the freaking Justice League. We aren’t going to be able to
restart civilization. Somewhere else, someone else with the right people and
gear is already on it.”

“You didn’t see
New York burn,” Tom said. He didn’t have the tobacco ritual to relax
himself, so he strained to sound reasonable. “You haven’t driven a few
hundred miles, which by the way is about the minimum distance to start getting
used to decaying corpses everywhere, looking at the wreckage of the country. It
looks like pictures of Rwanda in ’94, but with Americans, Robbie. The radio
spectrum is dark, the sky is empty and there is no civil authority anywhere.
Whenever I haven’t been cursing whoever started this shit show I’ve been trying
to bully around or over all the opposition in order to live up to my promises.
I am going to redeem my word one way or the other. Long term, that means
restarting everything.”

Robbins just sighed
eloquently.

“Robby, we need
a hydro plant because any credible plan to jumpstart our bit of civilization
requires large scale power.” Tom said, rehashing the main points of his
strategy for what felt like the tenth time. “The only plant that we can ‘fuel’
is a hydro plant, of which there are several in the Tennessee Valley. I’ve to
get to Site Blue in order to warn them and ultimately prep it for a move too. I’m
nervous about leaving you here because of the map. Yes, that we left in wreck.
And yes, that was my fault. Doesn’t change what we have to do now, though.”

Robbins sat and
glowered at his own map which was spread across the table. His skepticism didn’t
require words. The distances on the map, the risk to their families, the
unknowns – those had all been discussed in detail. He squinted over at his old
team mate.

“I didn’t say
that there aren’t details to work out,” Tom said, moving papers away so
that only the empty brown table top stretched between himself and Robbins. “But,
the alternative is to wait here until we are invested by a superior force, and
then get into a gun fight on someone else’s terms while your family is
supplying some of the foot soldiers. Even if those particular bad guys never
show, how many years do you want to wait before you believe that there might
not be anyone else coming?”

He glanced across
the barn at the table where Worf, Astroga, Ralph and Eric were being run
through a class on the antique machine gun by Junior. The tall,
broad-shouldered youth was developing a progressively goofier expression as
Astroga asked questions from close range. The younger daughter Jordan, who had
been the ammo bearer for her brother, was at the briefing table sharing a bench
with her parents. She also shared their same skeptical look.

“I agree with
Robbie,” Pascoe said, squinting at Tom. “You done fucked up, Thomas.
But that doesn’t mean that I have any better ideas.”

“Wait a minute,
Davey!” Robbins said angrily. “You’re ready to pull up sticks and
take our families on the road, out there?!”

“In case you
forgot, Rob,” Dave Pascoe said, then spit into empty beer can. “Smitty
was the man who gave us all the heads up that got us here before the virus
spread. Took a mite of risk doing that, too. He ain’t said anything about it
yet, but I’ll bet my last roll of Cope that he also toted along vaccine for
everyone.” He looked back over at Tom. “Right?”

“We have
vaccine,” Tom admitted. “We’ve followed the refrigeration protocol so
it should be good. Can’t recommend it for anyone under twelve, ten at the
lowest.”

“Better than
nothin’,” Pascoe said, grinning at his old team mate. “Like that
vaccine, a lot of really useful stuff, infrastructure, is going to go bad
without someone to tend it. Better we try to get to some of it sooner than
later.”

“Given the
scenario that we find ourselves in, Tom, what we need is time,” Robbins
Senior said as he looked first at Pascoe and then at the Tom. “The tangos
that you bumped into could be heading this way right now, correct?”

“Yes,” Tom
answered. “But we bloodied them pretty good. If they were going to pursue
instantly, we would have seen them already. While things get sorted for the
move here, we can send a couple teams to double back till one or both are in
contact and delay the shit out of them. If we give them a second bloody nose, I
think that they will chase us in order to defeat us in detail this time.”

He leaned over the
map, and started tracing routes between the camp, Site Blue and the nearest
dam.

“So we make two
teams. Put some demo and say, four shooters in each truck. We’ll retreat towards Blue while you head for
the plant. Each scout truck covers one of the possible approaches to Blue. If
we stumble into them unexpectedly, we can run faster than they can push, so we
buy you time. If they chase us all the way to Blue, they bounce off the Site’s
defenses, and we still buy you time.”

“How do we
coordinate?” queried Pascoe.

“Mostly, we don’t,”
Tom said. “The ridges limit VHF to line of sight. HF might work if we can
get a decent antenna, good tropospheric conditions and an operator that knows
his ass from a hole in the ground. We can set up a comms window once a day or
so, but don’t count on it unless we can get to a high point, or we’re really
close. On your end, start at Fort Loudon, then Watts Bar and Chickamauga. There’s
one more past Chattanooga, but getting that close to a city is dangerous. If
the first three are clearly beyond restart, then come back here. We’ll do the
same.”

Detkovic was a
member of their little brotherhood, but his family hadn’t made it to the refuge
unscathed. He’d taken the necessary actions to keep his wife from harming
anyone after she turned, and as a result of heroic efforts, he hadn’t lost any
of their large brood on the way to the refuge.